Good communication is a hallmark of healthy organizations, but it’s often founded on the belief that employees thrive when given clear directions. In today’s increasingly complex organizations, it’s not enough to tell people what to do.

Leaders who ask evocative questions instead of giving instructions set the stage for better communication, employee engagement and high performance, especially when they’re charged with supervising knowledge workers.

After airplane crashes, chemical and nuclear accidents, oil spills, hospital errors and cruise-ship disasters, expert reviewers have frequently found that lower-ranking employees had information that could have prevented these events or lessened their consequences. Senior managers were guilty of ignoring their subordinates and being consistently resistant to hearing bad news.

Employees often worry about upsetting their bosses, so they settle for silencea decision that exposes their organizations to risks with potentially irreversible outcomes. This dynamic plays out in government offices, hospitals and corporations with divisions in power and status, regardless of how democratic and “fair” they claim to be.

How can you create a climate that encourages people to speak up, especially when safety is on the line? How do you convince your staff to correct you when you’re about to make a mistake?

Learn to ask the right questions instead of telling your staff what to do.

Questions should be genuine, based on curiosity and without an agenda. Effective leaders Master the art of “humble inquiry,” says Edgar H. Schein, PhD, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor emeritus and consultant.

Unfortunately, asking questions runs counter to traditional business cultures that value achievement and performance over building relationships. Nonetheless, soliciting others’ input is a fundamental aspect of human relations for leaders who want to foster solid relationships, trust, communication and high performance.

What’s Wrong With Telling?

We live in a culture of telling, where conversations become opportunities to show how smart or funny we are. While we ask questions to show interest in another person, we just as often want to sway them to our viewpoint or get something from them.

When we tell, we put other people in a position of inferiority they come to resent. One-way communication implies that they don’t know what we’re telling them and that they should already know it. This approach provokes defensiveness. People stop listening to you so they can work on a snarky comeback.

In contrast, asking questions temporarily empowers your conversation partners, giving them an opportunity to share what they know. You deliberately put yourself in the inferior position: of wanting to know something about them. This technique opens the door to relationship-building.

The Fear Behind Asking Questions

Displaying vulnerability is truly terrifying for many leaders.

You have to make a choice:

Risk appearing fallible by asking questions.

Risk creating a culture where people wait to be told what to do.

Take the first step: Banish any obsolete beliefs about omnipotence, and focus on practicing Humility. Ask real questions. Embrace the reality that you depend on your subordinates. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with soliciting their feedback.

Defining Inquiry

Professional pollsters, researchers, therapists and executive coaches have dedicated years to refining their inquiry skills. The rest of us take it for granted that we know how to ask questions. We tend to mimic our role modelsusually parents, teachers and bosseswho rely on superficial or social questions that are essentially disguised forms of telling:

Why weren’t you at home (in class, at the meeting)?

How could you screw this up?

When did I ever tell you to do this?

What were you thinking?

These seemingly open-ended questions are actually quite controlling. If you want someone to reveal the full story, avoid steering conversations in any given direction. Distinguish open inquiry from the three other types of inquiry:

Diagnostic

Confrontational

Process-oriented

Open Inquiry

Open inquiry evolves from authentic interest in another person. We ask questions to encourage honesty and minimize preconceived biases. We have no real agenda, other than to discover what’s on the other person’s mind.

Diagnostic Inquiry

It’s easy to veer off the path of open inquiry by homing in on a particular detail. Doing so may steer the conversation in a different direction and inadvertently return control to you.

Determine why you’re doing this. Are you trying to get the job done, or are you inappropriately indulging your curiosity?

Confrontational Inquiry

Leaders sometimes insert their own ideas in the form of a leading or rhetorical question. By doing so, you’re tacitly giving advice and trying to influence your conversation partner’s answers. Your partner may experience this as manipulative and become resistant.

Process-Oriented Inquiry

Leaders practice process-oriented inquiry when their focus is the conversation itself. This may be helpful when a discussion starts badly. You can explore solutions by asking:

“What’s happening right now?”

“Are you feeling defensive?”

“Have I offended you in some way?”

“What should I be asking now?”

The underlying attitude of competitive one-upmanship that plagues senior leadership teams will continue to stifle inquiry until you shift your attitude. Focus on being curious about others, without letting personal expectations and judgments cloud communication. Enjoy the benefits of asking meaningful questions in a psychologically safe work environment.

It takes discipline and practice to allow yourself to appear vulnerable. Consider working with an Executive coach like myself, to break through any vulnerability barriers and perfect the art of humble inquiry.